The Solution
It was right there the whole time
A dream I had.
Nay, a premonition.
A basketball court. Inside a gymnasium.
Forty, maybe fifty guys are there, gathered by the basket, a loose semi-circle dotted along the three-point line.
And when I say guys, I mean young guys, athletic guys. Basketball guys. Guys in Jordan’s, guys rocking that single sleeve compression thingy.
What even is that? Does it get the blood moving, but just on that side? It’s like that athletic tape you see people wearing on the back of their arm, on their triceps and elbow. What is that? What’s that all about?
No one knows.
These guys are hoopers, I realize, straight up hoopers; and then, in that same runaway train of thought, I realize for the first time that I’m also there. I’m among them. Me. Forty-four-year-old Adam Cayton-Holland. Your boy, ACH, right there. Amongst the hoopers.
The realization fills me with dread. I’m a fish out of water here. I can’t play at the same level these dudes can play at. I know that, and my very first thought is one of survival. Just play it cool. Don’t call attention to yourself. Surely, someone will come along and right this situation.
But no one comes along.
So, I just stand in the group, confused, and aimless. It looks like I dropped these kids off at practice then refused to get off the court. I should be in the bleachers, minding my own, watching the game and dicking around on my phone. But for some reason I can’t will myself to do it.
Somewhere deep down I sense that there is more to this story for me. Something tells me not to quit. So I remain, in all my what-the-fuckery, some oblivious dad in a sea of ridiculous athletes.
I drift to the back of the crowd, try not to make eye contact with anybody. I study my surroundings, and immediately conclude that this is the nicest gym I’ve ever been in. By a long shot. Like, way nicer than the Jewish Community Center, and that shit is pretty nice. But this. This is next level.
I take note of the banners adorning the walls, and lock in on one in particular: 2022-2023 NBA CHAMPIONS.
Holy shit. This is the Denver Nuggets practice court. We’re inside Ball Arena.
Gradually the matter at hand reveals itself to me. Like a man awakening from a coma, I realize that this is a tryout. An exclusive, invitation-only tryout. And I’m one of the chosen few.
Then it’s go-time.
A ball is produced, a single basketball, and people start shooting. It looks just like any other shoot-around, loose, informal, a warm-up. But that’s all surface. Everyone here knows full well the stakes. This is dog-eat-dog.
People start launching beautiful jumpers. Slick crossover dribbles followed by shot after crisp shot. No one goes in for an easy layup, or dunk. There’s no silly jump hooks. This is all outside game. And while there may not be any coaches around, yet, for us the tryout has already begun.
One guy shoots a three, and nails it, so he gets the ball back. He takes his next shot, and misses it, so someone else take a shot. That dude misses and the ball comes to me. Just bounces right over. I snag it, and though I’m terrified, I throw up a shot, more to get it over with than anything else. It clanks off the rim. Not an airball, but a miss, and I exhale. My turn is over. But then some prick rebounds it, and instead of taking a shot for himself, he passes it back to me. As if I made the shot. Which I did not.
Point of parliamentary procedure.
When you’re shooting hoops with someone, a game of HORSE, whatever, if you make a shot, you get the ball back for another shot. That’s just how it works. You make that shot, you get another. You miss, you don’t get to shoot again until the other guy shoots. On and on. Ad infinitum. Them’s the rules. Them’s have always been the rules. To deviate from that script would be wrong.
Now this asshole is deviating from the script.
“Take another shot, old man,” he says.
And everyone dies laughing. Like, fucking dies. I’m mortified. Until this moment I had thought I was blending in; no one had said anything so I assumed it was working. But it wasn’t. How could it work? It looks like John Ritter just subbed in with two minutes to go in the Sweet Sixteen. They know. They’ve known the whole time. I should not be here. It’s utterly ridiculous that I am here.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I grab the ball, throw up another shot, and it’s a total airball. I wasn’t even close.
Laughter explodes throughout the gymnasium. Detonates, then literally echoes. Everyone doubles over in hysteria. They collapse into one another like an NBA bench when someone does some oh-no-you-didn’t shit. Like they can’t even believe my lame-ass.
Then it gets crueler. Someone grabs my air-ball, and throws it right back at me. Again! Have another shot, clown! I take another jumper. This time I hit the side of the fucking backboard.
Like, what!? I’ve never done that! That wasn’t even close. I’m freaking out. When will this nightmare end?
It won’t. It doesn’t. Because the ball’s suddenly in my hands again. And what can I do? Put it down on the floor? Walk out of the gym, in tears? I’d get clowned that much harder.
Besides, that’s not who I am. If I’ve learned one thing from my decades watching basketball it’s to keep shooting. Find your stroke. Shooter’s gotta shoot.
I hoist another one up and, mercifully, it drops. Phew. Made one. The ball comes back to my hands, and for some reason my feet step back. I don’t even control them, I just watch them back up. I’m behind the three point line now, and of course that gets some sass from the peanut gallery.
Oh, he’s cocky now!
Made one, going for the three?! I see how it is!
Let’s see it! Let’s see what you got, old man!
I drill a swish. Not even a hint of the rim. Nary a whisper. Then I just start talking shit. I have zero right to be talking shit, and yet shit I talk.
Did you hear that net snap?! Best sound in the world, to hear that net snap like that!
Someone passes me the ball. I shoot another. Another swish.
Ooooooh, that was pretty! I mean, it felt pretty. I didn’t see it. Had my eyes closed. Did it look pretty? Because it felt really pretty!
The ball comes back. I shoot another. I make another. And the only thought I have in my head is no one is ever getting this ball back again. I found my stroke. The rest of you motherfuckers can sit back and watch. Pull up a chair. Get comfortable.
I make another, then another, and I start moving around the arc, to challenge myself, like it’s the three three-point tournament in the All Star Game. And I’m just draining them. One after another. I rattle off eleven three’s in a row. Eleven. To stunned silence.
The silence allows me to notice a general hubbub off the court, a vague sense of commotion. People shuffling around, craning their necks. In the midst of my flurry of threes, of my heat check, I take a peak, to see what all the fuss is about. And then I see him.
The Joker. Nikola Jokic. #15. The three-time MVP. The NBA Champ. The best basketball player on the planet.
He’s been summoned. To witness what I’m doing. To watch me shoot, in all my glory. He was somewhere in the bowels of Ball Arena, lifting weights, taking an ice bath, whatever. But they got him. They told him he needed to see this, with his own eyes, and now he’s here, watching me drain threes. It's no secret the Nuggets have been having three-point issues, we all know what a three-dependent league the NBA has become. Suddenly the Nuggets may just be staring at the solution.
I keep draining threes. Draining them like my life depends on it. And somewhere in the middle of this insane streak, I look over to the sideline and lock eyes with Jokic. And he gives me this subtle head nod, like, I see you, brother. If you blinked you would have missed it. But I didn’t blink. I’m done blinking. I register the nod, and I nod back, then I just keep shooting, like a man possessed.
And in that exact moment Jokic knows. And I know. This is going to work. This is absolutely crazy but crazy is what we need right now. Crazy could work.
The Denver Nuggets have found their solution.
POSTSCRIPT
Spoiler alert. It did work.
I was the solution.
It wasn’t a dream.
It was a seed.
A seed that blossomed into a mighty oak.
The Nuggets won the NBA Championship the year that I played. I was a fan favorite. How could I not be? A 5’9”, 44-year-old rookie who’s a three-point machine? That’s a popular player. Plus I was surprisingly tenacious on D. A real pest.
And in a lot of ways, that season cemented Jokic’s legacy. I mean, it was already set, of course. Undeniably. But my season helped him notch his second championship. And even though I wasn’t part of the third, fourth, or fifth, even though I was just this wild asterisk in an epic Denver Nuggets dynasty, there are a lot of people who said if I don’t show up out of nowhere that year, the Nuggets never get over that psychological hurdle. Of winning another. Of not being a one-hit wonder. Like, I was this impossible baton toss between the original championship, and the many that followed.
And I never argued anyone out of that stance.
I signed an amenable deal that set the Nuggs up well for future roster moves. I wasn’t greedy. Look, I realized this was all nuts. I knew I was lucky to be there; I was just thrilled to help the team that I’ve rooted for my entire life. And when my kneecap literally blew out of my leg in a preseason game the following season, a sweet memento for some kid sitting court-side, I knew the ride was over. You don’t come back from that. Not at 45.
But the crazy thing is the ride for me and Nikola was just beginning.
I never foresaw Jokic’s daughter, and my son becoming friends. And I certainly never anticipated them getting married twenty years later! Childhood buddies, reunited. Me and Nikola laughed at the coincidence of it all. What a world. What a life.
When my son informed me he wanted to move to Serbia with his new bride, I was a little surprised, sure, but I wasn’t shocked. He had traveled there countless times over the years, naturally, and he seemed genuinely intrigued by people, the culture. We told him we would miss him, but that we would visit often.
But when Nikola reached out with the invite to move there as well, well, I must say I was shocked by that. I knew of his beautiful compound, the one just outside of Sombor, near the state-of-the-art hippodrome he built. Indeed, we had vacationed there once, as our children fell in love. But never in a million years had I thought about moving! This was Nikola’s home, a beautiful place to spend some time on the far side of the planet. Nothing more.
The offer felt like too much.
“Nikola,” I said. “We could never. This is too kind—"
I’ll never forget what he said to me then, the way he interrupted my protest. It was so him.
“Adam,” he said. “Stop being hero. You were hero once. Now let me be hero.”
How could I argue? I’ve always been happy to let Nikola be the hero. Sometimes I think it’s maybe why I was put on this earth.
So I accepted. We accepted.
Now my wife and I are happy here in Serbia. We are fascinated by the country’s tumultuous history, and the proximity to Europe didn’t hurt. We travel frequently. Take in all the ancient cities we had previously only read about in books.
When we’re not doing that, I hang with my buddy, Nikola. Mostly at the horse track, of course. The sport hasn’t really taken hold of me, but I enjoy it enough, I suppose. It’s just fun being there, in the mix. And if I’m being honest, the attention I was getting in Denver was getting to be a burden. I didn’t even realize it until I left. But it was a lot.
Here, in Sombor, the people leave us alone.
We live a quiet life, me and Nikola, watching the horses, drunkenly dancing to folk music. Sometimes we even shoot hoops. Never at an outdoor court, of course; a crowd would inevitably gather, and we’re not trying to turn it into a thing. We just want to play. Because we love the game. And we always will.
We play at his gymnasium, where there’s photos of his career on the walls, including that iconic shot of him lifting me into the air after we clinched, in Boston. 21 is our poison. Most of the time he destroys me. It’s not even close. But every once in a while the light goes on, and suddenly I can’t miss. Like that original tryout way back when. Like so many games that legendary season. Bad knee or no, I can still find my stroke. And then Nikola’s cooked. He knows it too. When that happens he always says, “Your head big now! Like in NBA JAM video game.”
After I notch my rare W, I tell him to take the L on the way out, like Coach Malone said that one time, and Jok laughs his big, Serbian laugh. He claps me on the back with his giant hand, nearly toppling me, and he smiles down at me, fondly. He smiles at his little buddy, here, in Serbia, on the other side of the world, and yet somehow, impossibly, home.
Then we go outside and play with our grandchildren.
December Shows!
Excited to get back to it, after five-weeks off making a movie in Atlanta! If you don’t know about that movie, man oh man I can’t wait for you to see it! It’s called See You When I See You, I wrote the screenplay, an incredible team shot it over the course of five weeks, and it will be out next year!
That movie is also the subject of a one-man-show that I’ve been performing for awhile, called Happy Place. I’m incredibly proud of the show, and I’ll be performing it in New York City this month. Twice! So if you know of anyone in NYC who might be interested in a beautiful show about depression, and mental illness, and suicide, that is also funny, please send them my way.
December 4th and 5th - New York City - Happy Place - UCBNY - Tix
Then I’ll be doing a show in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Can you believe I’ve never done comedy in that city?! Well it’s true. Though I did see Ace Ventura there when it came out. So there’s that.
December 18th - Albuquerque - Launchpad - Tix
Then it’s back to Colorado, for a headlining weekend in Fort Collins at the Comedy Fort, fast becoming a top spot in the nation to perform. Get tix now as these often sell out.
December 20-21 - Fort Collins - Comedy Fort - Tix
Also, doing some more shows with my buddy Rory Scovel, where we riff over movies. These are a ton of fun, and pop up all the time. So check my website for those!
The Monthly Clip
Here it is, the greatest joke ever told.
God damn, great joke, Adam. Way to go.
Before you go, follow on the socials!
I got off Twitter, ‘cause fascism, and I joined Bluesky, ‘cause not fascism. Yet. Or if it is, it’s not a fascism that I know about. Yet.
Anyway, follow me over there if that’s your thing.
Thanks for reading my writing. I love doing it. if you feel inclined to post, or share this, by all means help me spread the word. That’s the game, you know?
You do. You do know. And that’s what I love about you. That, and so much else.
See ya next month!
Because we love the game 🙌